Endorsement: Rob Simmons In Republican Senate Primary

Vote Aug. 10: Despite his strange campaign, his resume recommends him

Former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons has a gold-plated public-service resume. His votes over time have been in line with the mostly moderate traditions of the Republican Party in Connecticut.

It is for those reasons that The Courant's editorial board, with hesitation, recommends that Republican voters in the Aug. 10 primary choose Mr. Simmons to be their standard-bearer in the fall election for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Christopher J. Dodd.

Our doubts center on Mr. Simmons' strange non-campaign campaign since losing the party's endorsement to Linda McMahon at the May 22 state convention. He put his campaign in mothballs and laid off his staff, but left his name on the ballot.

Only recently has he stirred, just weeks before the vote. He's run one ad, and he declared at a debate Tuesday, "I am running for the United States Senate."

Mr. Simmons

Over the years we've often disagreed with Mr. Simmons, who is 67 and lives in Stonington. But he has a few things his opponents in this primary faceoff lack — congressional, public service and national security experience among them. In an increasingly dangerous and unpredictable world, the latter is valuable. It isn't an absolute requirement, but it's a plus.

Mr. Simmons is a Vietnam veteran. That would help him in the fall election against Democrat Richard Blumenthal, whose dissembling on his service status has cost him some points in public opinion polls. Mr. Simmons, further, was a CIA operative, a staff member in the U.S. Senate, a state legislator and a three-term congressman.

He knows the issues. He's in the mainstream. He's got an impressive resume.

Ms. McMahon

The woman who beat Mr. Simmons for the party endorsement at the May convention, Ms. McMahon, 61, of Greenwich, has no previous electoral experience and pretty much focuses narrowly on a help-for-business agenda. Yet the hard-nosed, engaging entertainment tycoon with a captivating life story is a breath of fresh air in Connecticut politics.

"I have walked in the shoes of a lot of people who live in fear of losing their jobs," she says. A college bride, she and her husband went bankrupt, lost their home and used food stamps as a young married couple before taking a small, family-run company and building it into a billion-dollar business, World Wrestling Entertainment, that's traded on the New York Stock Exchange. They apparently learned well from experience. Theirs is a huge achievement.

Ms. McMahon clearly has leadership skills and business moxie. She has the ability to deftly handle rhetorical fastballs.

But it's a strike against her that she won't test her capacity to withstand hostile questions in additional debates with her rivals.

Further, WWE's schlocky, off-color content is not everyone's cup of tea, as one of her ads admits. To the extent that voters believe — unfairly or not — that the content of her business enterprise reflects her values, it distracts from her campaign message. Likewise, any new whiff of scandal could damage her candidacy.

Ms. McMahon has developed a plan to help small business and create jobs that relies too heavily on tax cuts and a stripping away of regulations — strategies that, when overused, have not served us well in recent years. Ms. McMahon seems too pragmatic and independent to be wedded to such an inflexible plan.

Mr. Schiff

Contending vigorously for the nomination along with Mr. Simmons and Ms. McMahon is Peter Schiff, 47, of Darien, a charismatic, ideology-driven investment guru and fund manager who petitioned his way onto the primary ballot. A libertarian whose claim to fame was an accurate prediction of the 2008 banking collapse, Mr. Schiff says the United States is headed for an even worse catastrophe "unless we halve the size of government right now."

His Tea Party-style apocalypticism foresees the collapse of the dollar's value, hyperinflation, shortages of food and energy, an increase in crime and social unrest. Mr. Schiff's bleak predictions and unrealistic prescription are unlikely to attract many voters.

Mr. Simmons is the better bet politically and agenda-wise for Republicans in the Aug. 10 primary election.